Winter weather watch

(Random winter walkies)



Last week in Woy Woy.

Saratoga from Blackwall Point. Go down Blackwall Road from the railway station. When you get to the mountain, go left and left again at the carpark sign.




This week in Woy Woy.

Barrenjoey Head and Lion Island from Ettalong Beach. Get the ferry from Palm Beach or go down Blackwall Road from the station then Memorial Avenue, straight ahead through the first roundabout, left at the second one (into Bourke Road) and park when you get to The Excresence.


I'd better piss off quick. Off to a nice sunny barbie. Will have a sausage sanger for yer.

The Rip Bridge

Took me a lot of walkies to get all the angles I wanted on this landmark. Here they are all in one go.




The Rip Bridge from Guyra Street Booker Bay. My favourite view.

It's called The Rip Bridge because it goes over The Rip, which is a bit of fast-flowing water in the narrow bit between the Woy Woy peninsula and Daleys Point. When the ferries go through it their engines have to strain a bit and a kayaker can paddle as fast as they like on The Rip and get nowhere.




Where it is.

The Rip Bridge is a Brisbane Water landmark. You can see it from all the way up Brisbane Water Drive as far as Point Clare. It's one of the busiest bottlenecks on the Central Coast. And when the big fires in 2006 closed the F3 motorway, the fire trucks had to come down the eastern side of Brisbane Water and across the bridge to get to The Bays next to Woy Woy.




Daleys Point end of the bridge. The road that goes over it is called Maitland Bay Drive on the Woy Woy side and on the bridge itself, then it changes its name to Daley Avenue, then at the roundabout at the top of the St Huberts Island ramp, it changes its name again to Empire Bay Drive. This takes some explaining when giving directions to lost tourists.




Just behind the railing about the middle you can see a bit of The Rip. The ridges in the background are the western side of Brisbane Water. The two mangrove islets in the left middle are nameless. St Hubert's is the island on the right (houses) and behind that is the hill of Saratoga.




Fishermans Bay, where the moving speedboat is, and Rileys Bay. Looking east-north-east from the bridge.



Booker Bay from the Woy Woy end of the bridge. Money lives in Booker Bay. It didn't used to.




The Rip Bridge from Blackwall Mountain. Orange Grove Road in the foreground. The houses at the left end of the bridge are at Daleys Point.




Thar she blows. The Rip Bridge from Daley Avenue Daleys Point.


Bloody idiots

There's been a spate of bashings of foreign students of Australian universities. Bashing foreign uni students is a fucking stupid idea. Particularly in a recession. They bring a shitload of money into the country.

International students (what uni's call foreign citizen students) pay around three times the money an Australian citizen pays to go to uni. So if a B.A. costs a citizen 20,000 it costs an international student 60,000. If a medical degree costs 60,000 it costs an international student 180,000.

They pay higher fees which means the uni can afford to stay open to educate Australian citizens when the government is taking shitloads of funding from education to spend on wars. (Former Prime Miniature John Wanker Howard, this means you).

They pay for accommodation. This is money into the local housing market.

They eat. This is money into the local shops.

They phone home. This is money into the local telephone companies, the same phone companies you use.

They go places on buses and trains. This is money into the local bus-drivers' pay packets.

Think you're doing Australia a favour bashing international students? You're doing it an injury. Grow a brain, numb nuts.


Right! I'm off for the long weekend. Running a mere 24 hours late and with a premature case of title="Ducktionary">shagger's back. Argh.

Have a good one, Straylya.

Old villages

The line of red dots in the centre is not an old village but the WWII emergency airstrip. It was gravel and its remains are occasionally dug up in someone's backyard.

The other isolated and grouped red dots are the old villages of the Woy Woy Peninsula:

Woy Woy (uppermost group)
Umina/West Street (lowest group)
Booker Bay (3 dots on right)
Pearl Beach (2 dots at bottom)


Woy Woy village:



Railway Street from the railway station



Masonic Hall Railway Street from the railway station



CWA Anderson Park, opposite the (current) ferry wharf. CWA stands for Country Womens' Association. The equivalent of the W.I. in the UK, not sure what it's American equivalent is.



Old Woy Woy Hotel, the one reputed to be built from bricks nicked from the construction of the railway tunnel.



Woy Woy Library, corner of Oval Avenue. Used to be the old Council Chambers in the 1930s but now the Peninsula's part of Gosford City Council and is administered from Mann Street Gosford.



Soldiers' Park, now known as Woy Woy War Memorial Park. On the water right next to the fish and chip shop.



Woy Woy Football Oval in Oval Avenue, next to the Library.



Woy Woy Wharf. Central part of the village then and now. Within 100 yards of the railway station, the shops and both pubs.

More photos of Woy Woy village at Bustling Downtown Woy Woy


Umina village (West Street):



West Street in 2005. West Street is not substantially changed in the last 2 years.
(Ignore the red circle, it marks a gas thingy up on the ridge.)



Shop down the quiet end of the shops, past the pub.



The pub, on the corner of Trafalgar Avenue. I have no front view of this pub. A glaring omission possibly caused by propping up the bar.



This servo (petrol station) stands where a cinema did in the 1950s, at the Ocean Beach Road roundabout at the south end of West Street.



The West Street anomaly.



Night safe on the former bank. Now the bike shop and now painted blue.



The Catholic church. Rumour has it this place is scheduled for demolition. I saw the drawings for the units to go up in their place but I was drunk at the time and may have imagined them.



Purple people eater, a recent addition to the old village of Umina.


Ettalong village:



The Excrescence. Where the carpark of this thing is there was the Ettalong Memorial Club, a three-storey lump in pebble-crete from whose open windows could be heard the aerobics instructor exhorting her ladies to lift! and lift! and lift!



Drop your pants/ A soul is wasted when there is no aim". Thus quoth the sign at the drycleaners opposite The Excrescence.

That's it for my Ettalong village photos. Hadn't realised it before but I've got bugger all from there. Must remedy!


Booker Bay village:



King's Store & Booker Bay General Store Booker Bay Road Booker Bay.



Old Brick Shop opposite King's Store Booker Bay


This post is about the villages of the Peninsula but it's also revealed some serious gaps in my photo collection. Mostly in Ettalong. So we all learnt summat today. Bless.


P.S.

I don't pass on chain email but this one is amusing.


For those of you who watch what you eat,
here's the final word on nutrition and health.
It's a relief to know the truth
after all those conflicting
nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

So eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you!

Walk #64 - Fearsome Schmearsome

Went up the last big hill today. It wasn't nearly as tough as I expected. Or rather, I'm much fitter than six months ago. It was a decent work-out but it was no more than that.

Saw another brush turkey. Heard him kicking up the leaves on my way back down The Rampart. He wandered out of the undergrowth on the up side of the road and ambled across the road. I was maybe ten feet away from him by this time, untangling my camera from amongst the muesli bars and waterbottles. He saw me at last and peered at me shortsightedly. When he realised I was human he twitched and hurried into the bushes on the down side. I stopped and listened but there was no female with him.

There was a big flock of galahs screeching overhead as well and a few kookaburras having a bit of a chuckle further up the ridge. On the flat parts on the Peninsula (which is most of it) the kookas only laugh at dawn and dusk. But on the ridges I’ve heard them at all hours of the day. There were plenty of magpies hopping about investigating things as usual. But none of them looked like swooping. The return of the cool days probably.



There’s a weird green thing up there. It's a sorta onion-shaped thing on a stalk that sits high on the ridgeside and no-one knows what it's for. But I found out today it's a reservoir. Or maybe it's an alien thingy and it just says reservoir on the sign. The top’s bristling with aerials.

(You know I'm kidding about the alien thingy, right? Don't be emailing me and telling me how you got probed. Unless you got pictures.)

From up there I could see down to Umina Beach, over Patonga Ridge (AKA Mt Ettalong) to Barrenjoey Head and Pittwater, down along Brisbane Avenue and Whatsit Street, across to the ridge above Phegan’s Bay, out to Ettalong and Riley’s Bay and beyond to Brisbane Water and Gosford. Quite a view. More than on the Plateau walk.

When I went up there on the bus I got the view along the length of Umina Beach. Didn’t get that this time. There was nowhere high enough to stand. I’ll go up there on the bus again and get it out the window.

Walking along The Rampart I could see the surf down on Umina Beach and hear it very faintly. At the finish of the walk the sky was filling up again with grey-bottomed cumulus clouds. Up on Castle Circuit it had been sunny and the perfume of jasmine and roses and wistaria filled the air. Summer’s definitely on its way.

Photos from this walk
Next walk

Walk #63 - Uncaffeinated

Wandered off for a walk yesterday morning. Had another test at the path lab at some ungodly hour and had to fast since ten the night before. No porridge, no apple, not even a nice hot cuppa tea. Plus I've been waking up at three every morning for a couple of weeks and brooding on things. So I was not exactly at full alertness capacity.

Anyways, after the test I got a decent-sized walk in. Munched morosely on a muesli bar and wandered down the wrong street a few times but managed to cover quite a bit of unwalked ground.

It was a sunny day, warm, clear sky. Bit of a cool breeze but I warmed up quick. There were a few dogs laying in the sun on their front lawns and cats sitting perkily on car bonnets. They looked at me and I looked at them. They were too warm to bark or scarper.

I trudged on, brooding and mulling things over and feeling hard done by. I was practically asleep on my feet. A wandering dog wandered silently up to me and pressed its moist nose into my hand. I jumped several feet and yelled a bit but the dog just gazed up at me mildly and waited for a scratch.

I scratched its chest and pondered. Haven't been feeling crash hot lately. The guts and various other ailments playing up again and there's all that crap with my father still going on. But this walkies thing has really pulled me through. It's been a constant in a time of ups and downs. It's also shown me that even if this guts thing never gets much better I can still get fit again and have some fun.

Now I just need to find my sex drive and I'll be sitting pretty.

P.S.
An amusing link for your reading pleasure:
Emma Tom taking the piss out of Bushshit.

Next walkies post
Next walk

Photos from Walk #56 - Up The Mountain - Part II

From Walk #56 - Up the Mountain.



Fishing off the jetty at Blackwall Point. Perfect day for just sitting there holding your rod.

Left to right:
St Hubert's Island. Hill of Daley's Point. Saratoga & Davistown behind St Hubert's on left. Hill of Empire Bay to the left of Daley's Point. Kincumber (probably) in the distance.



Detailed size.



Foreground: Blackwall Point.
Left to right: Blackwall foreshore on the Peninsula. Saratoga & Davistown right of centre in the background. Riley's & St Hubert's Islands on the right.

Detailed size (takes yonks to load).



Blackwall Point. Detail from Blackwall Pt Panorama.



Blackwall Point & foreshore. Detail from Blackwall Pt Panorama.

Next walk

Photos from Walk #56 - Up The Mountain

(Walked 7th of September 2005)

Glancing at my notes this walk is coming back to me. It was a hot day, more like summer than spring. I went up the mountain then along Orange Grove Road in front of it. The views weren't bad. The best views to be had would've been from the lookout but the path up there was too overgrown and I was too buggered already to scramble up there. I'll go again after the next burn-out on the Mountain.



Taken a third of the way up Blackwall Mountain.

From left to right: Woy Woy peninsula stretching across to halfway along the roofline. Behind it is Brisbane Water. The tiny sand islet off Blackwall foreshore. Some vegetation's growing on it now so it might be permanent soon. Unnamed magrove islet below Saratoga. Hill on right is Saratoga. Hill behind Saratoga is Kincumba Mountain. Distant hills from left to right are Point Clare & Gosford. Behind them are the hills of Narara, Lisarow & Ourimbah.


(Big version) Taken from a building site halfway up.

From left to right: St Hubert's Island behind the tree. Ramp down to St Hubert's to the right of the tree. Daley's Point. Half the Rip Bridge against the tree on the right. Houses on Orange Grove Road in the foreground.



Taken from the same building site.

The road in the foreground is Orange Grove Road. The bridge is The Rip Bridge. The houses behind the bridge look to be in Riley's Bay and the hill behind them is Killcare Heights. The houses on the left in the middle distance are on Daley's Point.

The intense blue of the water is from the natural light plus a little something from the death throes of my camera.


In someone's garden near the foot of the Mountain.

When I came back down the Mountain I went down to Blackwall Point then along Orange Grove Road. From there I could see down into the end of Cedar Crescent, down to that shingled house I couldn't date before. When I walked Cedar I thought it was on Cedar. But my hist list sorted it out. It's "hospital (part): former house, Rock Davis, 380 Orange Grove Road ... 1860s". It's on a big block that goes from the gate up on Orange Grove Road down past the end of Cedar Crescent to the water. Rock Davis is the Rock Davis of Brick Wharf fame and is buried in the graveyard of that nice little church at Kincumber.

More photos from #56 (This URL is correct and the post exists (archive > scroll down). Despite this, there's a 404 on it. No idea what that's about.)

Walk #62 - Mountain Cool

Beautiful day for a walk. Cool and overcast and quiet.

It started off rather crappily. Couldn't sleep again, feeling rather grim, guts aching like buggery and so on. But I'm buggered if I'm going to let that crap stop me from finishing this Walk when I planned to finish it (end of September). Won't be letting it keep me from History Week either.

Anyways. It was cool, even slightly nippy. The cloud cover had come over at dawn and was keeping the temperature down. The birds were twittering and flitting about the trees. There were plenty of native trees for them to flitter and twit in. The first street in my walk went up to the foot of the ridge. There were a lot of seventies houses at the end and seventies houses tend to have gums or paperbarks in their gardens. And there was a park on the corner and a creek winding its way round the foot of the ridge. With the cool and the low clouds and the ridge rising almost vertical from the end of the street, it was like being in the mountains. Very nice.

The feeling didn't fade over the length of the walk. I walked a long lazily-curved street glorying in the name of Greenhaven. It was hilly at either end and ran beside the creek in the middle. The few cars that passed me went up onto the ridge and the sound of their engines straining up the incline just added to the impression of mountains.

The creek was pretty dry. A few stagnant puddles here and there, the lantana making a dense prickly tangle of undergrowth, the dead dry leaves lying thick in the creek bed. But the magpies were leaping about on the bank, examining things and staring in the way magpies always do and when I stood still for a few minutes I could hear a brush turkey scratching about in the leaves on the other side of the creek.

Up at the end of Greenhaven there were two more turkeys. The male I could see. He was wandering about on the slope of someone's front yard. He stopped when he saw me and watched me from behind a small bush. Then I heard the female scratching in the leaves on the ridgeside. The male saw me look at her and started stamping about, kicking the leaves up and generally trying to distract me from her. I see the ducks on my foreshore walks doing the same thing. As soon as you look at the female duck she freezes and the male duck starts quacking and flapping. I don't know much about animal behaviour but I remember reading that in a Gerald Durrell when I was at school.

Walking back along Greenhaven I looked up at the top of the ridge ahead. All over the ridges and hills of the Peninsula there are outcrops and small cliffs of grey rock. There were maybe a dozen of these cliffs along the bit I was looking at. Most of them had a house or two built on top of them. That must be The Rampart up there. The last big hill of my Walk. At the base of some of these little cliffs there were dark holes and crevices. Must be deep overhangs. Not caves. It's the wrong sort of rock for caves. But if you were a kid a deep overhang at the bottom of the cliff under your house would make a great cubbyhouse. The views'd be great too. You're gonna like the photos I take when I walk up there.

I wanted to walk up there this morning. I was tired but I was just as tired when I did the Plateau walk and I managed that fine. But I had to go to Whatsit Street and see the bloody doctor. More bloody tests. Do I look like a fucking guinea pig or something? On the plus side, I got the all-clear from an on-the-spot test for something or other.

This afternoon is just as pleasant as this morning. Still nice and cool. Cooler actually and it's raining now. Got all my pot plants pushed to the railing of the balcony to get a thorough wetting, got the kettle on and got a packet of biscuits to eat. I'm good.

Next walk

Walk #61 - Buggered

Short walk today. Finished off the rest of Ettalong. Eight more walks to go then I'm finished Woy Woy.

Had another gander at the church while I was there. The Uniting one on Picnic Parade with the foundation stone saying "28-11-'31". With what I've learned about brick pier foundations, I'm thinking the '31 is 1931 rather than 1831.

The style of the church fits in with St Luke's (1904) and St David's (1908 - 20) as well. The library's copy of A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture says the style of Ettalong Uniting, St Luke's & St David's is "Carpenter Gothic circa 1840 - circa 1890". The three of them are very simple, like St Luke's below.

I've seen plenty of Carpenter Gothic churches in American movies and TV shows but they all have a bell tower or they're bigger. All the little white wooden churches I've laid eyes on in Australia are the same stripped-back version of the style as St Luke's.



There's a bit of a gap between the end of the style and the building of the Woy Woy churches. Presumably the plans were chosen then there was a couple of decades of funding drives before they could buy the materials. I don't know. My brian's too tired to work it out right now.

Anyways. There was just a bit of breeze this morning. I couldn't hear the gums on the Mountain until I was up close.



Bit of noise from Maitland Bay Drive as it heads up the on-ramp and over Rip Bridge but that was it. Been quiet the last couple of days. Probably shock over the Poms beating us at the cricket.

I found an old shop on the corner of Fassifern Street and Memorial Avenue. It's three flats now apparently and used to be a grocer then a butcher. It looks about the same age as King's. I had a sticky at the caravan park. Which actually is all holiday cabins but calling it a cabin park sounds weird. Along the Maitalnd Bay Drive side of it you can see some of the residents have been there a while. They've done their own paving in the miniscule backyards and bought bird-baths and so on. They'd get a lot of native birds visiting what with being right across the road from the Mountain.

Okay, I'll stop now. I'm raving. Hardly slept last night and I was buggered before this morning's walk but I had no trouble doing it then going off to do other stuff after. Shows how far I've come in the seven months since I started this walkies thing.

Think I'll put the kettle on and potter about for a few minutes then watch Wallace & Gromit on the telly.

Next walk

Walks #59 & 60 - Music To My Ears

It was practically hot on the weekend. I got pretty sweaty on my Saturday walk. But it's nice and mild again. The winter sun's back and there's a stiff breeze.

#59 - Monday

Edgecliff Road was nowhere near a cliff, certainly not on the edge of one. It was hard against the foot of Patonga Ridge (Mt Ettalong). One of life's little mysteries.

Sylvannia Road was quite woody. It ended at the foot of the ridge and the last house had a bamboo grove on either side of its driveway. Most of it was the bog standard bamboo you see wherever there's bamboo but behind it on one side there were maybe a dozen trunks of golden bamboo soaring up to maybe 40 feet high.

I could hardly hear the soft whisper of the bamboo groves over the sound of the gums on the ridge. They roared like a distant waterfall. As I walked along the street I could hear other trees in the foreground. A few European trees and, near the creek, some paperbarks and tea trees. Plenty of banksias dotted about too.

My all-time favourite recipe for wind-in-the-trees noises is a background of gums and pines overlaid with a palm or two, a small cluster of tea trees and a couple of dozen nicely spaced banksias. And the wind needs to come in gusts to cover the range of noises the trees can make. HMV oughta stock a CD of that.

Wandered down to the beach. You can get to the caravan park end of Umina Beach from Berrima Crescent. There's a wee carpark there and a loo. Doubt if it's a beat though. Too close to someone's house.

I perched on a rock at the end of the beach and listened to the sound of the surf in front of me and the gums behind me on the ridge. The sun was warm and the wind had a pleasant bite to it. There was a huge boulder perched on the rocks. No idea whether it rolled down the hill or washed up in a storm. Wedged under the front edge of it was a tree trunk. It was beautiful. Bleached white as milk by the sea and the sun and sitting against a background of brown and cream and purple rocks.

It was a good day for a brisk walk along the beach and I could see a dozen people doing just that. A few were taking their dogs for a walk and there was one Dear Old Thing stumping along with a fixed stare and a determined expression. He was missing all the scenery but no doubt he'll notice it another day.

I could've happily sat there for an hour or two mesmerised by the people change from black dots at the far end of the beach to fully formed humans as they got close. But I had to be home by lunch so I set off again.

A block back from the beach I couldn't tell how far I was from the water. Couldn't hear the waves over the wind. Not that they're loud anyways. Due to the beach being protected by the heads. Or something. I'm no oceanographer.

Off in the side streets it was quieter still. Bugger all traffic. Just the wind and the dogs barking and the scrape of a rake. Some guy was raking leaves up into a pile. The wind was really starting to gust by this time and, sadist that I am, I was hoping there'd be another big gust just as he turned away from the pile. But no such luck.



When I was a wee thing we used to go every Autumn to a place we called the Autumn Park. It's part of King's Park in Perth. It's down on Mounts' Bay Drive near the old brewery building. It's full of big old London Plane trees and in Autumn they drop all their leaves and the leaves make a carpet of crunchiness on the grass. God, that was good to run through and roll in. The joy of of the crunch was indescribable. I still pick up as many leaves as I can in Autumn and have a bit of a handheld crunch session. Very soothing. Maybe they should have leaf-crunching sessions at these pricey spas people go to.

Anyways. Walkies. Albany Square sounded very grand but when I rounded the corner into it, it was just the stub end of the road, an unsealed dead end. Pleasant enough. A bit of bush along the creek and the bend in the road cut it off visually from the surrounding houses and gave it the air of a tiny village. A dog sat grinning at me from behind a fence. A biggish dog, short-haired and biscuit brown. There's so many crossbreeds now I don't know what I'm looking at half the time.

Did a couple more streets after that and I was finished for the day. Went back to Mt Ettalong Road to wait for the bus home. The wind was starting that eerie thrumming along the powerlines. Which I realise now is where they got that sound they used in Twister. Wouldn't mind a CD of that noise as well.

Photos

#60 - Wednesday

Plenty of wind again today. Bit of a bummer for the firefighters. They've got a fire to fight in an awkward spot up on the ridge. Saw it as I was coming home and I can smell it very faintly coming in the window. They'll probably have to get the choppers in to water-bomb it.

I was up near the Patonga end of the ridge this morning. It was quiet there. Bugger-all traffic and what dogs there were were sunning themselves and couldn't be stuffed barking at me.

The ridge was close on two sides of me. The wind in the gums was beautiful. A rushing sound like a creek close by. The creeks themselves were not rushing. We're s'posed to get rain in October, according to some bloke on the bus, so maybe they'll rush then. Right now they're still and muddy and overgrown with lantana.



The main part of today's walk was in streets no more than ten years old. They were in one of those estates where you have to buy a house from the developer or not at all. The houses were all brick jobs and most of them had Federation repro details. There were a few designs with Federation era (circa 1890 to circa 1915) rooflines as well.

Not many houses in Australia's suburbs are named. There's always a few called 'Weona' or 'Ruo Emoh' of course. I've been keeping an eye out for unusual ones and so far I've seen a house called 'Jerry Sue', one called 'CherMar', a large brick-and-tile called 'Boar Shack' or Boar something and today there was one 'Weona', a 'Itldousal', a 'St Clements' and a 'Lanark Brae'. Lanark's a town in the Scottish county of Lanarkshire, which is the county Glasgow's in. I always thought a brae was a small river but a quick google suggests it's a mountain. You learn something new every day.

Today's walk was much quicker than it looked on the map. It was also the 10th last walk and the finish of that part of the Peninsula. I've got another nine walks scattered here and there over the Peninsula and then I'm finished.

Next walk

Photos from Walk #51 - Plateau

These photos are all from the Plateau walk I did a couple of weeks ago. I'd link you to the walk post but my main blog's down for a few days.

Click on pictures to see bigger versions.



From left to right:
Phegan's Bay, Woy Woy Bay, Koolewong (behind Woy Woy Bay), Park's Bay (partially hidden behind tip of Koolewong), the railway line & Brisbane Water Drive connecting from the Peninsula to Koolewong (middle), the Peninsula (flat suburban bit), Pelican Island (thick line to right of railway), Saratoga (hill in middle distance on right) and from Gosford across to Green Point (distant hills).

Taken from The Sanctuary. Which is one of the 5 streets of the Plateau walk.



From left to right:
Horsfield Bay, Phegan's Bay & Woy Woy Bay, the ridge of Koolewong above Woy Woy Bay, Brisbane Water and from Gosford to Green Point (between trees) in the background.

Some detail on the original size.



Ettalong & Wagstaffe from The Palisade. The water in the middle is off Ettalong and you can see the white blot on the lanscape that is Ettalong Club. The water on the right is between Lobster Beach and Umina Beach. Blackwall Mountain is partly visible over on the left. The hill behind it is Daley's Point. Killcare Heights is in the middle background.

That's the Peninsula laid out there in the middle of course. You can see maybe 1/6th of it in this photo. Where I was standing to take this photo is back against the ridge on the south-west side of the Peninsula and from there to Ettalong Club is about as wide as it gets.



Ettalong & Wagstaffe from The Palisade. The water in the middle is off Ettalong and you can see the white blot on the lanscape that is Ettalong Club. The water on the right is between Lobster Beach and Umina Beach. Blackwall Mountain is partly visible over on the left. The hill behind it is Daley's Point. Killcare Heights is in the middle background.

That's the Peninsula laid out there in the middle of course. You can see maybe 1/6th of it in this photo. Where I was standing to take this photo is back against the ridge on the south-west side of the Peninsula and from there to Ettalong Club is about as wide as it gets.

The biggest version will give you a lot more detail. Including the two pines marking the entrance to the old Booker Bay cemetery in Bogan Road.



Box Head is just out of the picture to the left. Barrenjoey Head is in the background in the middle. That's Patonga Ridge (AKA Mt Ettalong) in front of it. The sliver of water behind Patonga Ridge is Pittwater. Bloody pricey spot to buy a house. Beyond Pittwater is Bayview & Ingleside. Maybe. The bit between that & Barrenjoey Head is probably Ku-ring-gai National Park.

The street in the foreground is The Palisade and the oval below it is probably McEvoy Oval. I was there a few weeks ago on the Egg & Spoon walk.

You can see a lot more detail on the biggest version.



The biggest size shows plenty of detail. Takes a minute to download though.

From left to right:
Blackwall Mountain, Daley's Point & Booker Bay, Fisherman's Bay & the knob of Ettalong, Riley's Bay & Killcare, Hardy's Bay & Killcare Heights, Wagstaffe, Lobster Beach, the sandbar (where the breakers are), Little Box Head and Box Head beyond it.

Ocean Beach/ Umina Beach is from about where to sandbar is to Patonga Ridge (Mt Ettalong) on the right. Beyond Patonga Ridge is Barrenjoey Head. Between them is the high end of Lion Island (you can only see it in the biggest version). In the distance on the right is Bayview & Ingleside. Maybe. They're part of Sydney. So is Barrenjoey Head. Between Bayview & Ingleside and Patonga Ridge is Green Point (the Pearl Beach one, other one's between Saratoga and Gosford).

Between the Heads is the Tasman Sea.

Photos from this walk
Next walk